Alors, things don’t always go as planned, including power outages at the delightful chateau and forgetting my password in the press room.

• Yesterday, Friday was a busy day at the 41st annual FIBD, as things heated up in the streets and tents. The day started off with an interview with Jacques Glénat founder of Glénat, one of the largest publishers in France, and one of the most successful self made men in all of comics, rising from a fanzine publisher inn 1968 to a multimillionaire today. I’ll be posting the entire interview with Glénat in the next few days but it was an honor to spend some time with one of the most important people in the French BD industry. Glénat had many interesting things to say about the future and past of comics.

• The overall crisis in French comics, all agree, is too many titles — the industry has grown from 2000 volumes a year to 6000, far too many for the industry to support. meanwhile sales have shrunk on top titles from 1 million to 80,000. Its a situation that has clearly led to worries and vexation even as the overall artistry of material remains strong. Still, the future of the art looks great.

• This morning, Saturday, I went to see the Tardi exhibit, an overwhelming, grim recreation of the experience of World War I, which presents the work in a relentless procession of images mounted on plywood.. The final room presents graves tattered flags and more of Tardi’s art, a monument to war’s waste of human life even as it celebrates the genius of Tardi’s humanist view of the butchery.

•As at cons worldwide Saturday is the big day here, and the line to get in was long.